Chapter 281: I've Already Come Down to Pick You Up

That drop of water fell to the center of the stone chamber, but did not splash.

The black water paused midair, as if supported by something, then slowly spread into a palm-sized water mirror.

The mirror showed nothing but pitch darkness at first.

Soon, a child’s face emerged from the blackness.

The child was about seven or eight years old, hair wet and plastered to his forehead, face pale to the point of translucence. His eyes were large, but his pupils were so faint they were nearly invisible.

He looked up at the outside of the mirror and spoke softly:

“Don’t come in.”

Xu Erxiao instinctively stepped forward.

“Who are you?”

Lu Yuan raised his hand, blocking him.

“Don’t answer it.”

The child didn’t look at Xu Erxiao. He only stared at Lu Yuan.

“They all call me Asheng.”

“But I don’t know if that’s really my name.”

The stone chamber fell silent for a moment.

Wang Cheng’an stared at the child’s face in the water mirror, his heart sinking heavily.

“Brother Lu, this one’s not like the things we’ve seen before.”

“Precisely because it’s different, we can’t trust it lightly.”

Lu Yuan fixed his gaze on the inverted well, his expression steady.

“You say your name is Asheng. Who gave you that name?”

The child in the water mirror thought for a long time.

“The people outside the well.”

“What people?”

“Lots of people.”

“They were all different.”

“Some wore long jackets, some carried medicine boxes, some held lanterns, and there was one old man with an abacus.”

Wang Cheng’an’s face changed.

“Iron Abacus?”

The child slowly nodded.

“He came here before.”

“He told me not to talk.”

“He said the well has ears above.”

Lu Yuan’s fingers slowly tightened.

Iron Abacus had indeed come to the inverted well.

And not just once.

The bone nails, black ash, old abacus, and broken notes he left behind weren’t things he had hastily scattered before his death.

Long ago, he had already touched the roots of the Main Cave. He had even seen this “Asheng” in the well.

But in the end, Iron Abacus didn’t destroy the well.

Instead, he scattered part of the clues, hiding them in the outer cave, the cellar, the black wooden tablets, and the offering ledger, as if waiting for someone who could truly reach this place.

“What did Iron Abacus tell you?” Lu Yuan asked.

The child lowered his head.

“He told me to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“Wait for someone who wouldn’t give up his name.”

The water mirror rippled.

The child’s face stretched with the waves, his voice growing blurred.

“He said that person would come with a broken token, a shattered mirror, black ash, and a blade that refuses to settle accounts.”

Wang Cheng’an, Lin Zhaoxuan, and the others all looked at Lu Yuan simultaneously.

Lu Yuan didn’t move.

The child’s words were too accurate.

Too accurate to be simple deception.

But precisely because of that, things couldn’t proceed according to its narrative.

“Iron Abacus is already dead,” Lu Yuan said. “He didn’t get to see you out.”

“I know.”

The child’s voice was very soft.

“I heard him die.”

“I can hear everything in the well.”

“Whoever calls names outside, whoever cries inside, whoever buries something in the ground—I know it all.”

“Then do you know what you are?”

The child was silent for a long time.

From the inverted well came a sound like splashing water, “Hua!”

This time it didn’t sound like water being walked through, but rather like something turning over at the bottom of the well.

“I’m not human,” the child finally said.

“But I used to be.”

The color slowly drained from Xu Erxiao’s face.

But Song Qinghe steadily held her oil lamp and asked softly, “What happened before?”

Lu Yuan didn’t stop her.

The child in the well didn’t seem to answer immediately.

The black water mirror gradually expanded, from the size of a palm to the size of a washbasin. No longer just the child’s face, it now showed a fragmented, intermittent scene of the past.

It was a mountain valley.

The valley didn’t have such dense forests back then. A dozen or so low wooden huts were scattered around the edges. People moved about in front of the houses, some drying herbs, some drawing water from the well.

The well was upright.

A child sat by the well—it was Asheng from the mirror.

He wore an old cotton jacket, holding a tree branch, drawing circles on the ground.

As he drew, several outsiders came to the village.

One carried a medicine box.

One carried a red cloth bundle.

Another was thin and gaunt, with an abacus hanging at his waist.

Iron Abacus.

But Iron Abacus at that time wasn’t as decrepit as he would later become. His hair was graying, but his back was straight.

He stood by the well, looking down at Asheng for a long time.

Then the scene suddenly shifted.

Darkness fell over the mountain valley.

The doors of the wooden huts were all closed, but seven clay pots were set out by the well.

The red cloth bundle was opened, revealing a black wooden tablet inside.

Iron Abacus stood by the well, his face pale, a piece of yellow paper pinched in his fingers.

He seemed to be arguing with someone else.

But the water mirror could only reflect his back, not the other person’s face.

Only a voice could be heard saying:

“The well’s eye has already opened.”

“If we seal it now, it will make the entire mountain collapse.”

Iron Abacus’s voice was urgent and low:

“Then let it collapse.”

“We can’t keep using children to fill it.”

The other person laughed coldly.

“We’re not filling it with children.”

“We’re nourishing the eye with life force.”

“This child was born in a yin year and a yin month, and just happened to be born when the mountain fog pressed down on the well. He’s the most suitable living guide.”

“If he doesn’t enter the well, who will bear the eye for this mountain?”

When Lu Yuan heard the term “Living Guide,” his gaze sank sharply.

The words “Living Guide” written on the altar’s wooden tablet hadn’t only referred to him.

Before him, there had already been a “Living Guide” in the mountain.

Asheng was the first one.

In the scene, Iron Abacus suddenly raised his hand, as if trying to snatch the black wooden tablet away.

But the next moment, the black water in the well surged violently, and all seven clay pots trembled together.

The child Asheng was carried out of the hut.

He was crying.

Crying fiercely.

Iron Abacus rushed over, but several people held him down.

The water mirror’s image twisted violently.

In the end, only the child’s shout remained:

“Uncle Abacus!”

With that, the scene abruptly extinguished.

Only the black water slowly rising from the inverted well remained in the stone chamber.

Lu Yuan stared at the inverted well.

“The Malevolent Deity’s true body couldn’t enter this mountain to begin with—or rather, it hadn’t fully awakened.”

“It needed to borrow the lives, shadows, names, and qi of living people to first grow an eye in the mountain.”

“An eye can see the road, a fetus can take root, and offered names can expand.”

“Asheng was the first piece of living flesh stuffed into this system.”

Song Qinghe’s face was pale.

“Then the one in the well now—is it still him?”

“Part of it is,” Lu Yuan answered bluntly.

“The other part has already become something belonging to this well.”

The child in the well heard this. The face in the water mirror slowly lowered.

“I want to get out.”

“But every time I move, someone in the mountain dies.”

“They came before.”

“Every time someone tried to let me out, another name would be added to the well.”

“Later, they didn’t dare come anymore.”

“What about Iron Abacus?” Lu Yuan asked.

“He came three times,” the child said.

“The first time, he tried to smash the well.”

“Seven people died in the well.”

“The second time, he brought bone nails.”

“He pinned down one root, but someone outside the mountain pulled the nails out.”

“The third time, he said he had no way left.”

“He said someone else would come later.”

Lu Yuan said nothing more.

Iron Abacus wasn’t an innocent man.

He had kept silent for the Malevolent Deity, collected accounts, guided the path, and no one knew how many people he had harmed.

But in the end, he had truly wanted to cut off the debt.

It was just that the road had rotted long before, and he couldn’t walk out alone.

So he left behind every clue he could, even if he himself would eventually die in the old debts, just to leave a crack for later people to pry open the mountain’s roots.

“Brother Lu,” Lin Zhaoxuan suddenly spoke up, “there are words on the well’s rim.”

Only then did everyone notice that along the inner edge of the inverted well’s mouth was carved a ring of characters even smaller than the offered names.

Those characters had originally been hidden by the black water. Only now, as Asheng finished recounting the old events, did they gradually reveal themselves.

Lu Yuan took two steps closer but still didn’t step into the center of the stone chamber. Using the oil lamp’s light, he read them word by word:

“The Living Guide is not a sacrifice.”

“The Living Guide is a lock.”

“When the eye awakens, the lock tightens.”

“When the lock breaks, the eye returns.”

“To break the lock, one must return the life.”

Wang Cheng’an was baffled.

“Return the life? What does that even mean?”

Lu Yuan stared at the last three characters.

“Asheng isn’t an offering.”

“He’s a lock.”

“The Malevolent Deity used him to open its eye, but at the same time, it’s locked between the inverted well and the mountain’s roots by his life force.”

“As long as Asheng remains, the Malevolent Deity can never completely leave this mountain.”

“But Asheng can never leave the well either.”

Xu Erxiao asked urgently, “Then we have to save him, don’t we?”

“We can’t save him,” Lu Yuan shook his head. “At least, not directly.”

“The moment the lock breaks, the true eye will return to its main body.”

“By then, the offering grounds in the mountain will collapse, but the Malevolent Deity will break free from this layer of mountain shell.”

“Then what do we do?” Wang Cheng’an asked.

“Return the life,” Lu Yuan said.

“Not by pulling Asheng out of the well.”

“But by giving back the life force, name, and shadow that were taken from him.”

“Turn the lock into something that’s no longer a lock. Let him become a complete person again.”

“Only when the Malevolent Deity loses its Living Guide will it truly be forced out of its main body.”

Song Qinghe looked toward the inverted well.

“But even his name might not still be there.”

“That’s why Iron Abacus left a second path,” Lu Yuan said.

He turned the black note over to its back.

The back had originally been blank, but now, reflected by the black water in the well, several characters emerged.

“The inverted well’s nine steles. Each stele holds one name.”

“Eight steles are for offerings. The ninth stele is for life.”

“Break eight, but not the ninth.”

“When the ninth stele unites the name, the Living Guide returns to his body.”

Lu Yuan raised his eyes to look at the nine stone steles surrounding the stone chamber.

The characters on the first eight steles had been so blurry they were nearly illegible.

But now, as the black water in the inverted well surged, each stele’s surface floated out a single character.

“Father.”

“Mother.”

“Home.”

“Surname.”

“Shadow.”

“Bone.”

“Voice.”

“Wish.”

The last one was still “Life.”

Wang Cheng’an muttered them under his breath, his expression growing increasingly grim.

“This means we have to put together all the things that were taken from Asheng?”

“Yes,” Lu Yuan said.

“The Malevolent Deity took a person and tore him apart into eight usable pieces.”

“Father and Mother are his origin. Home is his return. Surname is his root. Shadow is the soul’s footing. Bone is his body. Voice is his thoughts. Wish is his heart.”

“And finally, with a single character for ‘Life,’ all these things are nailed down in the well.”

“Where are those eight things?” Zhou Heng asked.

Lu Yuan looked at the nine steles and said heavily, “They’re in this very mountain.”

“The offerings in the outer cave, the identity tablets in the stone corridor, the clay pots in the Main Cave, and the name-sending path of the inverted well are all pieces of what was torn apart.”

“The offering lines we just cut off have already released some of the residual names.”

“But to fully return Asheng, we have to find the eight scattered roots of what was taken from him.”

The child in the well suddenly grew anxious.

“You can’t search for them.”

“Why not?”

“They will know.”

“Who?”

“The things in the mountain.”

The child raised his face. In his pupils was reflected an even deeper blackness from the bottom of the well.

“They’re not all in the Main Cave.”

“The Main Cave is just its face.”

“There are eight stele guardians in the mountain.”

“Each one guards a piece.”

“Iron Abacus only managed to pull out one nail before.”

“He never found the places where the steles were guarded.”

Lu Yuan asked, “The eight stele guardians—are they all evil entities?”

The child nodded.

“In this mountain, there are no living people besides you.”

No sooner had these words fallen than a sound of footsteps suddenly echoed from the stone corridor outside the chamber.

Very soft.

But it wasn’t the sound of a single person’s footsteps.

It was like many people, barefoot, stepping on wet stones, one step after another, slowly descending from the upper stone path.

Wang Cheng’an whipped his head around.

“Someone’s coming?”

“Not people,” Lu Yuan said. “They’ve sensed the inverted well stirring.”

The oil lamp’s flame shook violently.

Deep in the stone corridor, a lantern appeared first.

It wasn’t the oil lamp in Song Qinghe’s hand. It was an old-fashioned white paper lantern.

No one was holding the lantern. It hung suspended in midair by itself.

Behind the lantern, a figure in a straw rain cloak slowly emerged.

The figure was unnaturally tall, the rain cloak dragging all the way to the ground, its brim pressed extremely low. On its shoulder, it carried a stone stele caked with mud and water.

With every step it took, the stone stele lightly knocked against its shoulder.

“Thud.”

Asheng in the well abruptly shrank back into the black water mirror.

“It’s here.”

“Which one?” Xu Erxiao asked.

“The one guarding the ‘Bone’ stele.”

The figure in the rain cloak reached the entrance of the stone chamber and stopped.

It didn’t lift its head.

But everyone could feel two intensely cold gazes from beneath the brim, fixed on the inverted well.

Then it spoke.

Its voice was like a stone rolling through well water.

“The Living Guide must not be moved.”

“Whoever moves him, leaves their bone behind.”

Wang Cheng’an’s grip on the broken abacus frame tightened instantly.

“Brother Lu, should we take it on first?”

Lu Yuan didn’t act immediately.

If the stele guardian could find its way here, it meant the commotion from severing the roots at the Main Cave had already spread.

If they fought head-on in the stone chamber now, they might very well fall right into the Malevolent Deity’s plan.

The inverted well was Asheng’s lock.

This place couldn’t be thrown into chaos.

“Delay it,” Lu Yuan said in a low voice. “Don’t let it touch the well. Don’t let it touch the steles.”

“How do we delay it?”

“Make it announce its own stele.”

Lu Yuan took a step forward, standing at the threshold of the stone chamber’s entrance.

“You guard the Bone Stele?”

The figure in the rain cloak slowly lifted its head.

Beneath the brim, there was no face.

Only a stretch of stark white jawbone, densely covered with carved names.

“I guard the bone.”

“The bone returns to the mountain.”

“The mountain returns to the eye.”

“The eye returns to the master.”

With every phrase it spoke, the stele on its shoulder flickered.

Lu Yuan made out the character “Bone” on the stele’s surface and suddenly said, “The bone does not return to the mountain.”

The rain-cloaked figure stopped.

“When the dead are buried in the mountain, the bone returns to the mountain.”

“But you people tore the bone from the living. The bone doesn’t return to the mountain. It returns to your accounts.”

“You don’t guard the Bone Stele.”

“You guard a stolen bone stele.”

The stele on the rain-cloaked figure’s shoulder shook violently.

From beneath the brim, the jawbone opened and let out a sharp, scraping sound.

“Nonsense.”

“Whether it’s nonsense, you know best yourself.”

Lu Yuan raised his blade, pointing it at the stele on its shoulder.

“Put down the stele.”

“The stele will not fall.”

“Then I’ll make it fall on its own.”

Lu Yuan grabbed a handful of salt and threw it at the base of the stele.

The salt grains struck the stone stele. The originally gray-black surface suddenly revealed countless fine bone patterns.

Embedded within each bone pattern was a dark red dot.

The rain-cloaked figure retreated for the first time.

“This is…”

Zhou Heng’s scalp crawled.

“There are really bones in the stele?”

“Not bones,” Lu Yuan said. “It’s the bone names it collected.”

“The people are dead. Their bones remain in the mountain.”

“But it recorded the fact that ‘the bones have returned somewhere’ on this stele.”

“As long as the stele stands, those people can never return to the earth.”

The rain-cloaked figure abruptly slammed the stele to the ground.

“Boom!”

The entrance to the stone chamber shook.

Mud and water splattered everywhere, and the salt line was shattered open with a gap.

The rain cloak on its shoulders fell away, revealing a towering skeleton inside.

The skeleton wasn’t white. It was a dark, blackish-brown, as if it had been soaked in mud for many years.

Its chest cavity was empty, but stuffed full of carved name bone tokens.

“Leave your bone behind.”

It raised both arms and reached for Lu Yuan.

Lu Yuan sidestepped to avoid it, slashing his blade across its elbow bone.

“Clang!”

The blade didn’t cut into the bone. Instead, it jarred Lu Yuan’s wrist numb.

“That bone isn’t its own,” Lin Zhaoxuan immediately said. “It wrapped itself in other people’s bone names!”

“Then we dismantle the names first.”

Lu Yuan retreated.

“Cheng’an, hit its chest with cinnabar.”

“Erxiao, wrap its legs with red cloth.”

“Zhou Heng, wedge Iron Abacus’s abacus frame into the stele’s crack.”

“Qinghe, shine the lamp on the stele, not on it.”

Everyone moved at once.

Wang Cheng’an flung a handful of cinnabar at the skeleton’s chest cavity.

The broken bone tokens inside the cavity immediately cracked and clattered loudly, and several of them fell out.

Xu Erxiao snapped out a strip of red cloth, just wrapping it around the skeleton’s left leg.

The Bone Stele guardian gave a violent yank, and Xu Erxiao was nearly pulled along.

Wang Cheng’an quickly grabbed him from behind, wrapping his arms around his waist.

“Erxiao, don’t let go!”

“I’m not letting go!”

Xu Erxiao gritted his teeth, winding the red cloth around his hand one more time.

That strip of red cloth was originally the guiding rope from the mountain pass. Now, guided by the “Return” character wooden chip, it had instead become something that restrained the evil entity.

Every time the skeleton guarding the bone stele struggled, the dark red on the cloth deepened.

Zhou Heng seized the chance to rush to the stele and jammed the broken abacus frame into the crack at its base.

“Crack!”

The stele’s crack was forced open wider.

The “Bone” character on the stele’s surface immediately tilted.

Song Qinghe held the oil lamp high, and its light shone directly on the bone patterns of the stele’s surface.

Those dark red dots lit up one by one in the firelight, looking like a swarm of tiny eyes.

“Brother Lu!” she shouted. “Something is crawling out of the stele!”

Lu Yuan had already seen it.

What crawled out of the stele’s crack wasn’t insects, but tiny segments of finger bones.

The finger bones dragged black threads behind them, stretching out from inside the stele, like a crowd of hands trying to grasp something.

The Bone Stele guardian suddenly stopped struggling against the red cloth.

It opened its chest cavity, and all the engraved bone tokens inside flew out at once, hurtling toward the group.

“Spread out!”

Lu Yuan swung his blade, knocking away two bone tokens.

The bone tokens shattered on the ground, and gray-white humanoid figures emerged from within them. Those figures didn’t attack anyone. Instead, they rushed toward the stele, as if trying to crawl back inside.

“It’s recalling the bone names!” Lu Yuan shouted. “Don’t let it recall them!”

Wang Cheng’an stomped on one bone token, seized the Iron Abacus’s broken frame, and smashed it down.

The bone token shattered.

A gray-white humanoid figure dispersed from it. It didn’t head for the stele. Instead, it floated toward the outside of the stone chamber.

The Bone Stele guardian’s skeleton jerked to a halt.

From its chest cavity came an extremely low moan.

“Keep smashing!” Lu Yuan said.

Zhou Heng, Xu Erxiao, and Wang Cheng’an each grabbed the fallen bone tokens and smashed them within the salt line.

One.

Two.

Three.

With every one that shattered, the skeleton dimmed.

Its originally towering form gradually shrank, and black mud continuously leaked from the gaps in its bones.

Taking advantage of its unsteadiness, Lu Yuan lunged forward and sliced open the last piece of bone armor on its chest with his blade.

Deep within the chest cavity was revealed a thin, long, black nail.

Tied to the black nail was a small piece of yellowed paper.

Lu Yuan reached out and tore off the paper.

On the paper was Iron Abacus’s handwriting.

“Do not destroy the Bone Stele. First return the bone names.”

“If the stele is shattered, the bones scatter, and the mountain’s roots collapse first.”

Lu Yuan’s expression shifted.

Iron Abacus had been here.

He had not only known about the inverted well but had also found the Bone Stele guardian.

But he hadn’t destroyed the stele back then, because smashing it directly would have caused all the bound bone names to scatter into the mountain’s roots, allowing the Malevolent Deity to use them to fill the cracks instead.

So it couldn’t be destroyed.

It had to be returned.

“Everyone, stop,” Lu Yuan commanded.

Wang Cheng’an had already raised the abacus frame. Hearing this, he forcibly pulled back.

“What’s wrong?”

“We can’t smash the stele.”

The skeleton guarding the bone stele was still struggling, wrapped in red cloth.

Lu Yuan looked at the bone tokens scattered on the ground and said, “Place the broken bone tokens back in front of the stele, but don’t let them enter it.”

“Arrange them in a circle.”

Though they didn’t understand, everyone immediately followed his orders.

Piece by piece, the broken bone tokens were set down in front of the stele, forming a small circle.

The gray-white humanoid figures floated above the circle, neither dispersing nor returning to the stele, simply hovering silently.

Lu Yuan used cinnabar to draw a line around the circle, then scraped a bit of black ash from the cracked black jar and mixed it into the salt.

“Bones return to the earth, not to the stele.”

“Names return to the people, not to the eye.”

“You don’t guard the bone.”

“You’re just keeping the dead locked in the mountain for it.”

He lit the piece of paper with Iron Abacus’s handwriting on fire.

The flame fell into the circle of bone tokens.

It didn’t burn the tokens.

The fire only burned away the character “Bone” on the stele’s surface.

The character gradually turned to ash.

The skeleton in the rain cloak abruptly stopped.

The jawbone beneath its brim opened and closed, as if trying to speak.

But in the end, it only let out a very faint cracking sound.

“Ka.”

The entire skeleton began to collapse from the chest.

The blackish-brown bones didn’t crash to the ground. Instead, they turned into grains of earth, falling into the circle of bone tokens.

The stele still stood.

But its surface was now blank.

Those gray-white humanoid figures circled the stele once, then drifted upward through the cracks in the stone chamber’s ceiling, heading toward the mountain.

Asheng in the inverted well said softly:

“The first stele has returned.”

The black water in the stone chamber receded by an inch.

The red glow on the ninth “Life” stele also dimmed slightly.

Lu Yuan looked at the blank Bone Stele and slowly let out a breath.

“The guardians aren’t the root.”

“The characters on the steles are the root.”

Lin Zhaoxuan gazed into the depths of the stone corridor.

“Seven more remain.”

“Mm,” Lu Yuan said.

“Father, Mother, Home, Surname, Shadow, Voice, Wish.”

“We have to find every single one.”

“None of them can be directly destroyed.”

“We have to peel them off the Malevolent Deity’s account and send them back to where they belong.”

Xu Erxiao sat on the ground, catching his breath. The back of his hand was scraped raw from the red cloth, but he still looked up and asked, “Brother Lu, which one do we look for next?”

Lu Yuan looked at the inverted well.

Asheng’s water mirror floated up again.

The child’s face was slightly clearer than before.

“The Shadow Stele guardian is closest,” he said.

“It’s in the mountain crevice right above the inverted well.”

“But it’s the hardest to find.”

“Because it doesn’t stay in one place.”

“It lives under everyone’s feet.”

No sooner had the words fallen than the oil lamp’s flame in the stone chamber suddenly flickered.

Everyone’s shadows stretched long behind them at once.

At the end of the shadows, in the darkness above the stone corridor, a figure identical to Lu Yuan slowly stood up.

That figure also held a blade in its hand.

And had a black wooden tablet hanging from its waist.

It stood where the lamplight couldn’t reach, raising its head slightly.

Its face, however, was completely blank.

Using Lu Yuan’s own voice, it said calmly:

“You don’t have to come up looking.”

“I’ve already come down to pick you up.”